He said, ‘Do ye think so – would ye let him come and work wi me?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m sure he’s better daein something as knockin aboot Furnace. There’s no much work fir him doon in Furnace. Ye could aye gie him something fir giein ye a wee help. Suppose it’s only liftin stanes to ye.’ My mother was always like that, willing to help.
‘Man,’ he said, ‘I could dae wi the laddie to gie me a wee bit help.’
‘Aye,’ she said, ‘I’m sure he’ll gie ye a wee help. We’ll no be long with Adie, about half a day.’ Adie had about thirty drills of tatties.
Now Neil had a wheelbarrow for hurling the stones. He had a spade and a graip for picking up small stones, and a reel with string on it for measuring the level of the dyke. And he had his wee can for boiling his tea. And his web of cloth to keep things dry. Also a graip and a rake for tidying up. But he hurled it all in the barrow wherever he went. This was his job.
‘Duncan, would you like to come and give me a help?’
‘Aye,’ I said, ‘Neil, I want to gie ye a help. I’m no doin nothing else the noo.’10
‘But, Betsy,’ he said, ‘I’m no wantin him, mind, fir nothing. I’ll gie him half a crown a day.’ Oh, sister dear, half a crown!
Back she tellt my father, ‘Duncan got a job. Johnie, Duncan got a job today!’
He said, ‘Wha wi?’
She said, ‘Wi Neilie.’
‘Oh, wi Neilie the mason,’ he said, ‘aye.’
‘He got a job fir buildin the dykes,’ she said, ‘on the road.’
‘By Christ,’ he said, ‘that’s a good job! Watch yirsel wi snakes!’ my father tellt me.
The next day I went up. No piece, no nothing, no flask, no tea. Just a wee taste o black tea in the morning from my mother. Eight o’clock I went up. My father wasn’t working. He was off, had nothing to do.
I tellt Neil, ‘I want my half-crown every night because my mother needs it.’
‘Duncan,’ he said, ‘you’ll get your pay.’ He kept a wee saddler’s purse. I mind on Neil fine, God rest his soul in heaven. He had a wee purse with a flap on it, kept pounds on one side and the change in the other. He always had money. He was good to me, God bless us. I started the next day and I had a knack for this job. The minute I started with him till the day I left him, it was the same as I had done it all the days of my life. I was only with him for about three days and he said, ‘You take the one side and I’ll take the other.’ The same as I was born into it, drystane dyke building.
And then my brother Sandy came back to Furnace with his wife Betsy. I had stayed working with Neilie all that winter on to the next spring. Now I was fifteen. My brother Sandy put his wee tent into my father’s barricade. He was back from Perthshire and he had two weans. Together we went to fish the tip, the granite quarry causeway along from our camp. We had to dig worms on the shore, and Sandy started to tell me the cracks about the horses, the travellers, Blairgowrie in Perthshire and other travellers and their horses. Laddies my own age with a pony.
‘Ye’re a big young laddie. What dae ye think,’ he says, ‘ye cannae stay here all the days o yir life! Are ye no better comin away tae Perthshire and gettin a job tae yirsel?’ I was fifteen exactly. This was the month of April, 1943. Sandy says, ‘Me and Betsy is gaun tae Forfar tae work on a farm. There’s an awfae guid gadgie, and aa the broon hares in the world’s sittin there.’
He coaxed me like a lamb of God. I wasn’t wanting to go. I was never away from Argyll in my life. Never more than a few days’ walk away from my father, and mother.
He says, ‘Brother, I’m gaun awa – if ye’d like to come along wi me . . . ye can come wi me for a wee while.’ And the stories he tellt me, the way he built it up to me, I had this picture in my head about all these travellers with horses.
He said, ‘It’s no rare to see seven and eight horses in one camp at one time!’ And I made up my mind, I was going to go with my brother Sandy to Perthshire. For the first time in my life I was going to leave my father and mother, and Argyll.
THE TINKERMAN’S FRIEND
Well I’ve been east and I’ve been west
I’ve travelled this far country
And the finest friend I ever had
Was a tinkerman to me.
He’s taught me things I did not know
About my ain country
And the finest friend I ever had
Was a tinkerman to me.
He makes his home with canvas small
As comfortable as can be
And he will lie on his bed of straw
Like any king could be.
Now I’ve got money and I’ve got land
And I have mansions three
But I would gie them all tonight
If a tinker I could be.
I’ll give away my money, I’ll give up my land
I’ll sell my mansions three
And I will go on the road tonight
For the tinker I must see.
I’ll travel east, I’ll travel west
I’ll wander far and free
And I will go on searching
For the tinker I must see.
Duncan Williamson
CHAPTER FOUR
SANDY WAS AN ORIGINAL TRAVELLER
I knew that life at home in Furnace with the old folk would be dull after hearing these stories my brother was telling me. The fantastic tales of travellers dealin and swappin, and the laddies of my age ownin ponies o their ain, which I didn’t believe, but was later to find out was the truth! So I told my father and mother, ‘I want to go wi my brother to Perthshire for a while, see the country for masel.’
My mother and father weren’t very happy about it, as mothers and fathers aren’t when their son goes away from home for the first time in their life. I was only fifteen. But when you’re fifteen years of age among travelling folk you’re qualified to take care of yourself, and there’s little the mother and father can really do about it.
Now my father had travelled the country as a young man himself, all through Fife and Perthshire and Angus. But after he got my mother, and got some family, he never left Argyll. My brother Sandy was a great worker and he liked to work on the farms, and worked all year round sometimes. By 1943 he had made the trek two or three times from Perthshire to Argyllshire back and forward and he knew all the roads. He had a couple of kids, a lassie Susan, and a laddie, Charlie. It was the spring of the year and he said he was going to make his way back to a place called Balbrogie Farm outside of Balbeggie on the other side of Scone by Perth. There he was going to stay for a while.
Now Sandy didn’t have a horse. He never had a horse in his life. He had this old twin pram he had converted into a kind of handcart. He put shafts on it, so’s he could pull it with his bits of stuff on, which was very little. Some sticks for the tent, some canvas, some cooking utensils, a snottum for the fire for boiling the kettle, some clothes for the weans, a basin for washing their faces and some clothes for himself and for his wife. That was all he needed. And his dog! He always kept his dog for the rabbits – for the pot.
So, we set off on a Monday morning. Now we had to walk all the way. Sometimes we put one of the kids on the pram and hurled them when they got tired, give them shot about. But we couldn’t make much speed, maybe ten or twelve miles a day at least. He had all his camping places set out along the road and he knew the distance he could go each day, like from Furnace to Inveraray, and from Inveraray to Dalmally, about fifteen miles. And he always left the roads to travel in the spring when the days were getting longer. You never hardly did it in the wintertime because the days were too short, you couldn’t go that distance.
We left Furnace and travelled on to Inveraray, spent the night on the shore. Sandy was a good traveller and he could build a good tent and take care of things. He knew what he was doing and I just strung along and helped him in every way, all I could for company’s sake. His wife Betsy made paper flowers. I never saw anybody in my life who could ma
ke paper flowers like what she could. She’d made them since she was a bairn at school. She was born and schooled in Tarbert on Loch Fyneside, reared with her granny. Seeing these flowers she made at a distance, they were just as if they were natural. And Sandy would make baskets. In the spring of the year the willows began to peel, but it was quite easy cutting willows along the roadside as you went and carrying a few with you. We always made a basket at night.
I’d been in Inveraray often enough, but I’d never been past Inveraray in the Dalmally direction. So we travelled on and we managed to make fifteen miles that day. We camped at this railwayside by Dalmally, about twenty-five feet from the track, a single track going to Oban. And I’d never seen a train in my life. I was excited. When it got dark we had this big coal fire, and while the kids were in bed we sat, cracked and made tea.
Sandy said, ‘Here’s another one comin!’ When the train was coming up the hill the fireman flung on coal, and the sparks were fleeing way up in the air off this train. I was fascinated.
I said, ‘Can you go on them trains?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s a goods train. But you can go on a passenger train.’ I promised myself someday I was going to go on one.
So we pushed on the next day. And this dog Sandy had, Jackie, he’d reared since it was a pup. It was a lurcher, between a collie and a greyhound. It was just a matter of Sandy taking him over to any place. There was no myxomatosis in these days – any wee piece of wood or any wee piece of field, anything – it was just rabbit while you wait! You just stood and said, ‘Go on, Jack!’ And away he went, scented the rabbit out, just killed it, brought it back and dropped it at your feet. Kill and carry! He was a great dog. So we never wanted for any rabbits along the way. And pheasants! He stood with his nose pointing at pheasants with his paw up, and then he dived. He snapped the pheasant, gave it a shake and that was it. And hares – he was great on the hares. But there weren’t so many of them. I had never seen any brown hares, there were none on Loch Fyneside. Plenty were in Kintyre, but I’d never been as far as Campbeltown at that time.
As we were walking I said to Sandy, ‘You were tellin me so many stories about horses and carts, and so many travellers . . . why do you no keep a horse? It would be handy. The bairns could get a hurl and your wife could get a hurl when she gets tired. You wouldn’t need to worry about pullin any barra.’ When we came to a hill we both had to pull it up, and both of us had to hold it back going down the brae. It was a hard thing to handle, kind o heavy.
‘No,’ he says to me, ‘brother. I cannae be bothered wi a horse. In no way. I never had one and I’ll never bother wi one. They’re all right for people who likes them. But for all the traivellin I dae, maybe back to see my mother and father in the summertime, I like to stay in the one place. I like to work on the farms. But you’re interested in horses – you’ll see plenty when we go on, maybe two or three miles further on the road.’
So that day we got the length of Tyndrum. The night before Betsy had made these beautiful flowers. I remember it fine. Red and white paper roses she made– beautiful. She took her two dozen and I took two dozen.
I said, ‘I’ll go to some o these houses wi you and gie you a help tae sell them.’ Six pence each for these flowers. I remember fine I went up to this house and knocked at the door. This old woman came out.
‘Oh my goodness!’ she said. ‘Flowers! Aren’t they early? I’ve never seen them so early as this.’
‘I said, ‘They’re no early, ma’m, they’re made o paper!’
She said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ Now when Betsy made the flowers, she put a green stem and a green bud on them and two wee leaves made of green paper. And to stand from here over to that corner, if you held one in your hand I couldn’t tell the real thing from the truth. She really was good. And the woman came over and felt them. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they might be paper, but they’re the most beautiful flowers ever I’ve seen. Who makes them?’
I said, ‘My sister-in-law makes them.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll take six of each.’ And she took six red ones and six white. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m goin to tell you something probably you don’t know. The next time you go sellin flowers, don’t put white roses and red roses together.
I said, ‘Why this?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘some people are a little superstitious o havin white and red roses together in the same bunch. But not me. But for the sake o yirsel sellin them, it would be better if you put some more coloured ones among them.’
So I had no bother selling my flowers. I sellt two dozen in no time at all. It was no a big village. I came back and I had twelve shillings. I wasn’t an hour getting them sellt.
Sandy said to me, ‘You’re good at the flooers.’
I said, ‘I’m no as good as what your wife can make them. Tell me something. That old woman I was speakin to down there, she tellt me it’s unlucky tae have red and white roses together.’
‘Ach brother,’ he said, ‘that’s an auld supersitition. That goes back a long, long time. That’s no the first hoose that tellt my Betsy that. It goes away back tae the days o the battle o the War o the Roses. Some folk fought for one side and wore a red rose, and if you fought for the other side you wore a white rose.’
So we got on pretty well. We never stayed more than one night in a place as long as the weather was good on the road. It was good fun to me steppin oot, pushin this pram on the level. Sometimes I had Charlie on it and sometimes Susan on top. I hurled them along the road. And Sandy and Betsy were just walkin linked to each other along the road like lovers. But I noticed the farms were getting bigger, and I could see the bigger ploughed fields. I remarked about this to Sandy.
‘Och brother,’ he said, ‘you’ve never seen nothing yet. This is only wee crofts here yet. Wait till you get down to the Lowlands and you’ll see right farms and right horses! Big horses.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘they’re big horses – in that field.’
He said, ‘They’re no the right big horses. Wait till you get down to Angus, down to Forfarshire to see some farms with fourteen and fifteen Clydesdale horses, real big anes. The farm I work on has got twelve horses onto it.’
I said, ‘I’d like to see it some day.’ So, we travelled on and the next day we got the length of Lochearnhead.
He says to me, ‘We’ll go along to the shore and kindle a fire. Sister Betsy’ll go back to the hotel and she’ll maybe get a piece tae make some tea.’
Now hotels in these days were awful good for giving a handout. Women just went round and they gave the maids, the lassies at the back of the hotel or the cook some flowers or a basket or something. And I remember what she gave Betsy in return. It was a pike, a cooked pike, full-sized with the head and tail off it. It was steamed. She brought it back and we had a good tea.
He said, ‘It’s hardly worth it . . .’ It was early in the day. ‘It’s hardly worth us staying here overnight’ cause we’ve got a good bit road to push on. I think we’ll go on tae St Fillans. It’s no far, only seven mile. And that’s a regular camp fir traivellers. Ye’ll see some traivellers and mebbe a wee yoke. There’s always folk gaun away North, away up by Glencoe or that in the summertime, the beginnin o spring onyway. And you might see some traivellers.’
So we pushed on to St Fillans and sure enough when we landed, we saw the smoke. He says, ‘There’s somebody campit here.’ We pulled in. He said, ‘I’m no gaun nae farther the night.’ It was about six o’clock, still clear. ‘We’ll camp in here.’ So I came with Sandy. There were two tents, two bow tents and a fire in the middle between them. This young man and his wife and two laddies. He knew my brother Sandy well.
‘Come on in,’ he says, ‘and put yir tent up at the fire.’ Sandy had met him before and camped with him. ‘Come on in, he says.
I gave Sandy a hand to get the tent up and we went for sticks. We were just close to the river. We used the water out of the river, it was quite clean.
Sa
ndy says, ‘This is my young brother here. One o my brothers. He’s gaun with me for a while in the summertime. He’s never been ower this distance afore. And he’s awful fond o horses, gaun to see all these horses I was tellin him about.’
‘Oh, ye’ll see plenty o horses there, laddie,’ the man says to me. ‘Good anes and bad anes and all kinds.’
But I didn’t want to speak very much, because me being reared with the country weans in the village of Furnace, I had the same kind of Highland accent as had the local weans I went to school with. The Highland tongue.
So we made our supper. And it still wasn’t late, so they put on another fire and some more tea. Then they sat and cracked about things, about farms and about travellers, who they saw and who they never saw, persons they’d never seen for years. The way the natural travellers’ crack went. And I mind the woman made some tea and gave us something to eat. Then she put the wee-est laddie to bed. We sat and cracked till, oh, it was late on at night-time. Then it started to rain.
Now Betsy, she always went into the front of the tent and half pulled down the flap. She lighted a candle and made her flowers inside the tent. The woman was in watching her making the flowers. They were okay, so we were sitting cracking at the fire.
The traveller man says to me, ‘You like horses, laddie?’
‘Aye,’ I said, ‘I like horses, mister. I’m awfae fond o horses.’
He said, ‘I’ve got a horse. A wee pony there. I use it for pullin the wee bit tent aboot. Ye’ll see it in the morning.’ And up against the side of his tent, so’s it would shield the fire and act as a kind of wind break was this wee cart, a float. He said, ‘I have a wee Shetland pony.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Now I’m dying to see this pony. But they all made up their minds for to go to bed, so we did.
The next morning it was still drizzly. Now flowers are no use when it’s raining. But Betsy was fly, as fly as a fox. She always kept a big packet of candles. She put them in a skillet and melted the candles. Then dipped the paper flowers into the wax. And this made them more real. With the candle grease the rain couldn’t do them any harm. So she and the traveller woman went away back to call the houses in St Fillans. The rain kind o faired up. But it was still drooky wet.
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